“Carl Morris, sure,” Griffin said.
So much for the incredible plans he’d had with Vickie for the day!
“Addiction, a friend, temptation... It could have been an accident,” Griffin said.
“Yes. Except that none of the waitstaff saw him in the restaurant, much less down in the wine cellar. And, as I said, Monica—who claims she really knew her husband—is calling it murder.”
“Ah. Okay, are you coming up?” Griffin asked Jackson. Krewe headquarters was only about an hour and a half—two hours at most—from Baltimore, even counting Beltway traffic.
“Maybe, but Adam wants to move delicately with this. We’re not invited in yet—Franklin Verne’s death isn’t even considered to be a murder at the moment. But of course, the way the man died, there has to be an autopsy and an investigation. Get started for me, and then give me a call. Let me know what you think.”
“All right. When did this happen?”
“He was found about an hour ago. Adam got the call from Monica immediately after she was visited by the police and informed that her husband was dead. If you head in quickly, you’ll see the body in situ. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it is Baltimore, and Poe is buried there, and, hell, the name of the restaurant isn’t Raven, but it is Black Bird...”
“What?”
“He was found gripping a little bird. Yes, a raven, of course. It’s the kind you can find just about anywhere they have Poe souvenirs. Cheap, plastic, black—on a little pedestal with its wings out, beak open...and the word nevermore written on the base.”
“Like you said, you can buy those souvenirs anywhere.”
“Yep. And, sorry. Just one more thing again.”
“What’s that?”
“He was surrounded by three dead blackbirds. Naturally, of course, no one can figure out how Franklin Verne—or the birds—got into the wine cellar.”
* * *
Vickie opened her eyes.
For a moment, she was disoriented.
She wasn’t at all sure where she was!
And then she realized that Griffin was there, looking down at her with concern. A half grin curled his lips, though that grin was far more rueful than amused.
Grim, even.
“A nightmare?” he asked her gently, a trace of worry crossing his bronzed face. There wasn’t a reason for her to be having nightmares—at the moment. The Krewe cases with which she’d been involved had come to their conclusions.
She was in the wonderful hotel in Baltimore’s Fell’s Point where she had enthusiastically suggested they stay on their trip from Boston to Arlington, Virginia—even though they hadn’t really needed to make it an overnight trip, much less a weekend one.
But she and Griffin had wanted time together. Fun time, sightseeing, before Griffin reported back to headquarters; Vickie was preparing to enter the FBI’s training academy at Quantico.
Eventually, they’d both be working out of the main special offices of the Krewe of Hunters unit. But for now, Griffin would be getting back to work, they’d both be settling in to living together—and Vickie would be starting up with the next class for twenty weeks of training that would lead to her graduation and an official position with the Krewe.
Vickie could have told Griffin about the dream. The Krewe were more than simply dedicated and well-trained agents. They had been gathered together carefully because they all had unique abilities, the center of those abilities being that they could communicate with the dead.
When the dead chose, of course.
She and Griffin had both known for years just what the other was capable of. While they had only rekindled their relationship recently, they had first met almost a decade ago—when a serial killer had nearly taken Vickie’s life. It had been a ghost, the older brother of the child she was babysitting, who had saved her by sending her running out of the house to safety, straight toward a young Officer Pryce. He’d been a cop before becoming an agent, though he had now been with the Krewe of Hunters for quite some time. He’d always known that he wanted to be in law enforcement.
It wasn’t that way for Vickie.
She loved history. She’d been a guide, leading youth-group tours as a historian, and she was an author of history books. She was proud to say that she was good at it—the most important reviews to her were the ones that said she had a way of making history fun for the reader.
It was only the cases with which she had recently become involved that had made her want to veer in a new direction. Not a change—an addition. There had been a case in which an incarcerated serial killer had managed to reach out to strike again, and then another where modern-day Satanists had tried to bring the devil back to Massachusetts.
She was now determined to do her best to become an agent herself, and it was a decision with which she was really pleased. It was odd to realize that she had once been embarrassed by her secret talent—the ability to speak with the dead. She hadn’t wanted to admit that it could be real. But she’d learned recently that her so-called curse allowed her to actually make a difference. She might have the ability to help in more bizarre cases—to save lives. And that mattered. To that end, she’d applied for and been accepted to the academy at Quantico. The Krewe might be a special unit, but even so, the agents were required to go through the academy. Vickie had passed the necessary tests on paper and made it through the grueling physical regimen necessary to become an agent.
Griffin already had an apartment in a wonderful old row house in Alexandria. For him, it wasn’t a move—just a return to his home of the past several years. He had only been back in Boston—where he and Vickie both were born and raised—on assignment.
Vickie had gone to college at NYU and then lived in New York for several years, but never farther south.
It was, she’d assured him, exciting to move.
But she was aware that Griffin believed it had to be a tug on her heartstrings as well—she was leaving a lot behind.
And she was. But she was also happy to be moving forward.
“A nightmare?” he repeated, and the note of worry seemed higher.
She smiled, staring into his dark eyes. Griffin was fine with her decision to become an agent; the Krewe was composed of both men and women, and he knew women were every bit as efficient and excellent as agents as men.
It was just her—but of course, he loved her. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to accept her walking into the same danger he did daily. He would, however, get used to it—and she loved him all the more for that fact.
“No, not a nightmare!” she told him. He far too quickly became concerned for her. All it had been was a bizarre dream. It might well have been due to the way they’d overindulged in some delicious blue crabs at dinner last night.
She would stay mum. For the moment. After all, she was in Baltimore. Edgar Allan Poe was buried here; he’d died here. Having dreams about him didn’t seem the least bit strange, actually.
But for the moment...
“It was a dream, and rather a cool one. I was walking around Baltimore...”
“We’re in Baltimore, so that seems...normal, maybe?”
She grinned, rolling onto an elbow to better face him—he’d already gotten up and showered and dressed for the day. He was an early riser—alert and ready to face the world as soon as he opened his eyes.
Vickie...not so much! But she was getting used to early mornings.
“Perfectly normal,” she told him. “It wasn’t a nightmare. It was just a dream. About beautiful old Baltimore—hey, it’s an important city, right? And we are going to go and do some cool things today, aren’t we?”
“Absolutely,” he promised. “Fort McHenry, the Inner Harbor, Federal Hill—”
“Don’t forget t
he aquarium!” she said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it. But I thought we might want a full day for that. We can do whatever you choose, my love. Anything you would like.”
“You’ve done it all too many times before?” she asked him.
He laughed. “No. I mean, I have done it all before, but not with you, so it’s as if it’s the first time, right?”
“That is an incredibly good suck-up line if I have ever heard one!” she assured him.
She thought that the line might take them somewhere, but he smiled and stepped away from the bed.
“I just have a couple of hours of work first,” he said.
“What?”
“Work. But there’s not much involved at the moment, and not much I can do.” He added quietly, “Franklin Verne—you know who he is?”
“Yep. I’m living and breathing and have ears and eyes. You can’t miss him. What about him?”
“He died last night.”
“Oh, that’s too bad—terribly sad! I’ve seen him speak. I mean, I write nonfiction and he writes fiction, but I’ve been at a number of conferences where he’s been a speaker on a panel. He was charming and very funny...helpful, giving. He’s actually written some historical fiction, and while Verne tended toward horror—some action, some sci-fi and some mystery—he was a wonderful researcher as well.”
“Always the writer!” he teased.
“That’s not going to be a problem, is it?” She’d spoken with other agents and she believed that—assuming she did make it through the academy—she’d still be welcome to write on her own time. It seemed that Krewe agents were, in fact, encouraged to keep up with any previous pursuits.
“It’s fine!” he assured her quickly.
“So what happened to Franklin Verne? I know that he was ill a few years ago—in fact, he joked about it sometimes when he spoke, saying that his wife taught him how to have fun and not be totally boring without a dip in a whiskey vat.”
“Yes, I had heard that he was supposedly as clean as a newborn babe.”
“Supposedly?”
“He was found dead in a wine cellar.”
“In a wine cellar—he didn’t have a wine cellar. I don’t think he even drank wine. When he did drink.”
“Not his wine cellar. But how do you know he didn’t have a wine cellar?”
“He was very open about his health problems, about his wild days—and his love for his wife,” Vickie said. “So, if not his own wine cellar—where then?”
“The Black Bird.”
“What?”
“Amazing. That was my exact reaction when Jackson told me. Want to come with me? I’m on my way there now. Heading off to kowtow to a local cop named Carl Morris.”
Vickie rolled out of bed. “Ten minutes,” she told him.
He nodded; he knew she was telling the truth.
* * *
Vickie and Griffin had both thoroughly enjoyed the Black Bird the night before; the service had been wonderful and the food had been delicious.
Vickie had especially like the decor; the building was 1820s Federal style, and the restaurant had the first two floors and the basement of the building while the remaining three floors above were given over to office space. Upon entering a long hall of a foyer with exposed brick walls and plush red carpeting, you came to the hostess stand. From there it went through to the bar area.
The bar was lined with portraits of Poe and his family; there were framed posters of quotations and more, all having to do with Edgar Allan Poe.
Stairs led from behind the bar to several sections of seats and a few party rooms of various sizes. The main dining room was the first floor, and tables and booths were surrounded by bookshelves.
Of course, not even the master could have written enough to fill the restaurant’s shelves; it was an eclectic mix of secondhand novels. The venue had charmingly been planned on the concept that every diner was welcome to take a book, and, naturally, you were welcome to leave a book or books as well.
New editions of Poe books were sold in the gift shop, which was conveniently on the way out, at the back of the restaurant. Of course, one could leave through the front door, but the bookshop was like a minimuseum, and Vickie sincerely doubted that many people ignored it. Their waiter—he’d introduced himself as Jon—told them that though the restaurant was comparatively new, they attracted a lot of local, repeat clientele, for which they were very grateful. But locals didn’t tend to shop for souvenirs, unless they were entertaining out-of-town friends. Since they were happily playing tourist, Vickie and Griffin made sure to visit the shop. Lacey Shaw, the woman working the little boutique, was a bit of a Poe aficionado, and she assured them that even the locals loved to come in and chat.
And their waiter was also quite the enthusiast. “Seriously, poor Poe was much maligned in life, but most of the time, the people who wrote about him were seriously jealous competitors, so of course they tried to make him out to be nothing but a drunk with delusions of grandeur. In truth? He was brilliant. You do know that we credit him with the creation of the modern detective novel? ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’! What an imagination the man had!” Jon had told them, eyes bright with his admiration. He might be a waiter there, but he truly loved the works of the man and had studied his life.
“I promise you, we’ll not argue Poe’s brilliance,” Griffin had assured him.
Jon had gone on, “But people love the restaurant because of the library. It’s not a new idea but what a great one—bring a book, take a book! Or just take a book. Well, okay—buy a shiny new one in the gift shop, too. I love working here! Gary Frampton—the owner—is a wonderful man. I’m crazy about him. Alice—the lovely girl with the long blond hair who greeted you as a hostess tonight—is his daughter.”
It wasn’t “lovely Alice” who met them then, though, by light of the next day.
It was an officer in uniform.
Griffin produced his credentials, and the officer gruffly told him to go on downstairs to the wine cellar.
The stairs were brick, as old as the building, but well maintained. As they descended, the air got cooler. The cellar was climate controlled but obviously didn’t need much help. It was stone, deep in the ground near the harbor, and naturally protected from the heat of a mid-Atlantic summer.
A tall, slim man who somewhat reminded Vickie of Lurch from The Addams Family was standing quietly in the center of the main room. Crime-scene techs—easily identifiable by their jackets—were moving about, collecting what evidence could be found.
The body of Franklin Verne remained, giving Vickie a moment’s pause.
She had known him in life. She had seen him when he had smiled, gestured, moved and laughed.
And now, of course, the man she had known—if only casually—was gone. What remained, she felt, was a shell.
She glanced at Griffin. They both felt it.
Yes, Franklin Verne was definitely gone. Nothing of his soul lingered.
At least, not here.
The dead man was seated in a chair near a desk; it was a period piece, Victorian era, she thought. Fitting for the place, but it had a modern computer with a nice monitor, along with a printer/scanner, and baskets most probably from Office Depot that held papers and mail and more.
The desk, however, was next to an old potbellied stove. In winter, it might have warmed up the place a bit, for those condemned to keep the wine company on a cold night.
Franklin Verne had died slumped back in the chair. His eyes were eerily open. A man in scrubs and a mask worked over him—the ME, Vickie assumed.
“Detective Morris?” Griffin asked, stepping forward to introduce himself. Vickie knew that Griffin would follow every courtesy, thanking the detective first and then speaking with the ME.
The Lurch-like ma
n turned toward him, nodding, studying him and then offering him a hand.
“Special Agent Pryce?” Morris asked.
“Yes, sir. Thank you for the courtesy. Our supervising director is friends with Mrs. Verne, as I suppose you’ve heard.”
“Yes,” Morris said, looking at Vickie.
“Ms. Victoria Preston,” Griffin said, introducing her. “Vickie is heading down to start at the academy in a few weeks.”
“Excellent,” Morris said, nodding. He lifted his hands. “Sad thing. I’ve been standing here, looking around, hoping that something brilliant might come to me. I can’t say I knew Mr. Verne—he was local, but he and Mrs. Verne were only in residence part of the year these days. He’s a popular personage around here. There are wild tales of him back in the day, but he never stopped giving to the city police, and he was involved in a number of charitable enterprises.”
“I’ve heard he was a very good man,” Griffin said. “Vickie knew him.”
“I didn’t exactly know him,” she corrected. “We met several times at conferences. I write nonfiction books,” she explained.
It was certainly not something that was at all impressive to Detective Morris. “Perhaps this is uncomfortable for you,” he said, “being in here. Since you know the victim. And you are a civilian.”
“Accepted into the academy,” Griffin said.
“I’m fine,” she assured Morris, glad that Griffin had so quickly—and indignantly—come to her defense.
Morris turned to the man working with the corpse. “Dr. Myron Hatfield, Special Agent Pryce, Ms. Preston. Dr. Hatfield is, in my opinion, one of the finest medical examiners to ever grace the Eastern coast,” he said.
Hatfield straightened. He was tall, too, probably about fifty, with steel-gray hair and a good-sized frame; he was built like a linebacker or a fighter. But he had a quick—if slightly grim—smile. “Nice to meet you. Sorry about the circumstances. I’d met Mr. Verne, too, at a fund-raiser for a local children’s hospital. He seemed a good man. And...well, the night I met him, he looked great.” He looked as if he was about to say more. He shrugged. “I really won’t know much of anything until I get him into the morgue.”